Sometimes it’s best to relax and go suburban, I guess…

I’ve never particularly enjoyed barbecuing. The only way I know to get a unique taste is to use charcoal which is a time-wasting pain in the ass just to broil some meat, then there’s the mess, the space it all takes up on the patio, it just never seemed worth the bother.

EXCEPT if you’re in a non-air-conditioned house in the hot part of summer. I do recall that in Michigan, which for a couple of summer months gets muggy as hell, cooking your meat outdoors can make evenings indoors much less completely ghastly than the kitchen oven would otherwise help them to be. So it was for a while our habit, when there was a ‘we,’ for me to do the cooking portion of the evening meal outside on the barbecue. Worked pretty well.

I tried to set myself up a summer kitchen with an old RV oven at the Lair a few years ago but I didn’t take the time or spend the resources to do it right.

I baked bread in it several times and it worked, but it would have worked better with more wind protection. Keeping mice out of it was a pain, and even wrapped in a tarp it didn’t appreciate being out in the weather. It didn’t last.

Winter before last, a neighbor asked me to haul this off…

That falls very firmly in the category of “People throw away the damndest things.” I would never have spent a dime for a propane barbecue but since this one virtually landed unbidden in my lap, it behooved me to re-learn how to, you know, barbecue.

I’ve baked on it a couple of times. It’s probably better than a campfire, but not by a lot. Temperature control is a real issue. One of these days I’ll get creative and drag out my dutch oven, but for my daily bread nothing beats the kitchen stove.

So, since it’s way too hot to bake in the cabin in the middle of the day, mornings like this I start my weekly bake as soon as I’m properly out of bed and before it gets hot.

And while it’s cooling, it’s time to go do morning chicken chores.